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Gasoline prices are at all-time highs. As a result, energy policy concerns echo in boardrooms and family rooms across the U.S. At a recent House Energy Committee hearing on “The American Energy Initiative,” Harold Hamm, the top energy adviser of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, warned that President Obama’s proposed repeal of the energy tax provisions for oil and natural gas producers (including a manufacturing tax deduction that all U.S. manufacturers receive) would decrease drilling activity by 40 percent. Can the U.S. afford that?

from Lawrence Summers:

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However the U.S. presidential election turns out, the trifecta of the Bush tax cut expiration, the debt limit ceiling on the horizon once again, and the Congressionally mandated sequesters – cuts in domestic spending – will force the president and Congress to wrestle with fiscal issues either in a lame duck session after the election or in early 2013. The decisions they make will have profound impacts on America’s fiscal future.

from Tales from the Trail:

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Big U.S. multinationals have a strange sense of timing: apparently, now is the ideal time to fight for a tax holiday. The New York Times on Monday had an in-depth look at the topic of a repatriation tax holiday, with lovely charts and a helpful video detailing the myriad ways corporations cut their tax bills by stashing profits overseas. Given the clamoring about lack of demand in the economy, the deficit talks and swollen corporate cash holdings, the lobbying push seems poorly timed at best.

from James Saft:

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James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

The move to reform taxation of billions of dollars in so-called carried interest paid to hedge fund and private equity executives is dead and prominent among the mourners should be investors in U.S. debt.

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That truism is often used as an argument against a tax on profits, or health benefits, or employment, but in the case of the rents extracted from the economy by the financial services industry here’s hoping it proves more of a promise than a threat.

from MacroScope:

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The International Monetary Fund has done what it was bid by the G20 and come up with proposals for getting banks to pay for the government help they receive when they get in trouble. You can read the actual wording here, but it comes down to this: